Troy Tulowitzki was the best defender in Major League Baseball last year by almost any measure I have found, he also was statistically the 2nd Best offensive rookie in Baseball. He lost the ROY to Ryan Braun who posted better offensive numbers but was the worst defender in Major League baseball. The only argument I have run across is that Tulos Home/Road splits were too disparate to see awarding him ROY or taking his offensive stats to seriously.

A similar issue arose when Matt Holliday was not awarded MVP despite winning 2 legs of the Triple Crown and finishing 4th in the third. Holliday again had similarly large differences between Home and Road numbers and the same argument that he is overrated persists. Can you judge if these two are as good as I think they are or are they as overrated as has been claimed

Yes, certainly in Holliday’s case. A letter I wrote to Denver Post columnist Woody Paige after he was upset about Holliday not winning the MVP:

Dear Mr. Paige,

The humidor has reduced the offense in Coors Field. It has reduced it from an
historically crazy offensive environment (increasing run scoring by as much as 29%) to
merely the highest offensive environment in the National League (+9%). Matt Holliday’s
home/away splits:

His road stats, with the HRs doubled, .301/.374/.485 with 22 HRs, look a lot like
the seasons Brian Giles, Bernard Gilkey, and Ron Gant have had about 20 times. They
received a few MVP votes and finished in the top ten three times between them. Did you
vote for any of these guys?

Would you like to try recent NL corner outfielders whose last names which begin with
a letter other than ‘G’ (Pedro Guerrero was far too good for this comparison)?

Happy Turkey Day, Sincerely,
John Bowman
Homewood, IL

Much of Tulowitzki’s value is defensive, and I don’t think that awards voters pay a whole lot of attention to any advanced defensive metrics. So either you win a Gold Glove or you’re just another guy. If Tulowitzki is just another guy defensively, then he shouldn’t have won. Of course, he’s an outstanding shortstop, and should have won the Gold Glove, and maybe the Rookie of the Year Award as well.

If this was a one time thing I would think it didn’t mean much but it seems that with very few exceptions players that leave Colorado have lower home but much higher road numbers which means that you can’t just write off his numbers.